Mercedes W14 Speculation Thread

[Stu]

I tought this forum was more technical, but some users like in this thread all they do is concern trolling and whataboutism and of course most have a Redbull profile picture

“Whataboutism”? It’s a speculation thread, it’s all whataboutery and conjecture.
“Trolling”? Pointing out a perception of weakness is not trolling.

Last year showed up the weakness in the team and no whataboutery even got close to predicting the uniqueness of the W13.
Big fans of the team were very confident when the final version was first seen in testing & even more confident that the team would overcome issues very quickly.

[Venturiation]

btw i don't see them keeping the same sidepods there will be change maybe not totally different but smaller changes to improve the weaker area based on their data

[AR3-GP]

I tought this forum was more technical, but some users like in this thread all they do is concern trolling and whataboutism and of course most have a Redbull profile picture

“Whataboutism”? It’s a speculation thread, it’s all whataboutery and conjecture.
“Trolling”? Pointing out a perception of weakness is not trolling.

Last year showed up the weakness in the team and no whataboutery even got close to predicting the uniqueness of the W13.
Big fans of the team were very confident when the final version was first seen in testing & even more confident that the team would overcome issues very quickly.

but it doesn't make sense to say that any change to the sidpods means that the team is a failure and they had wrong concept
so every team that now updates their car means the previous is car is failure and was the wrong direction?
and he keeps repeating the same thing over and over even when most have said that the sidpods don't matter that much

btw i don't see them keeping the same sidepods there will be change maybe not totally different but smaller changes to improve the weaker area based on their data

Toto Wollf said the car shown to him in the windtunnel didn't look much different to the W13 (which is a clear indicator that the sidepods are the same). The engineers said the changes were underneath.

With all that said, there was a report of a very late design change, (which could be the sidepods? but I'm only speculating)

[Venturiation]

Toto Wollf said the car shown to him in the windtunnel didn't look much different to the W13. The engineers said the changes were underneath.

but this was during the season, in the abu dhabi race
during the winter i think they would have changed something even if not big

or maybe because of the budget cap they prefer to keep exactly the same sidepods to spend the budget elese since they think sidepods weren"t the issue

[AR3-GP]

Toto Wollf said the car shown to him in the windtunnel didn't look much different to the W13. The engineers said the changes were underneath.

but this was during the season, in the abu dhabi race
during the winter i think they would have changed something even if not big

or maybe because of the budget cap they prefer to keep exactly the same sidepods to spend the budget elese since they think sidepods weren"t the issue

Abu Dhabi was in the end of November. It's not that long ago.

[chrisc90]

Toto Wollf said the car shown to him in the windtunnel didn't look much different to the W13. The engineers said the changes were underneath.

but this was during the season, in the abu dhabi race
during the winter i think they would have changed something even if not big

or maybe because of the budget cap they prefer to keep exactly the same sidepods to spend the budget elese since they think sidepods weren"t the issue

He actually said that very early January. https://www.planetf1.com/news/toto-wolf ... 14-design/

[Venturiation]

Toto Wollf said the car shown to him in the windtunnel didn't look much different to the W13. The engineers said the changes were underneath.

but this was during the season, in the abu dhabi race
during the winter i think they would have changed something even if not big

or maybe because of the budget cap they prefer to keep exactly the same sidepods to spend the budget elese since they think sidepods weren"t the issue

Abu Dhabi was in the end of November. It's not that long ago.

but during winter you start thinking about upgrades
just like last year they brought the update late with sidepods
some teams bring those updates at testing some at the 1st race

[Venturiation]

Toto Wollf said the car shown to him in the windtunnel didn't look much different to the W13. The engineers said the changes were underneath.

but this was during the season, in the abu dhabi race
during the winter i think they would have changed something even if not big

or maybe because of the budget cap they prefer to keep exactly the same sidepods to spend the budget elese since they think sidepods weren"t the issue

He actually said that very early January. https://www.planetf1.com/news/toto-wolf ... 14-design/

no he didn't that's just some news site recycling old stuff

you can see here https://racingnews365.com/wolff-reveals ... mid-season

He hinted at a car which retained the 'zero sidepod' idea to challenge next season's RB19 from Milton Keynes.

"I go in the wind tunnel, and I say: 'That thing looks exactly like this year's car'," he explained to media, including RacingNews365.com,in Abu Dhabi.

"But they say to me: 'It's very different underneath'.

"It is about the airflow, the weight distribution, the aero map.

"Our car fundamentally changed mid-year - we changed the concept but you couldn't see anything on the bodywork.

"I think the narrow sidepod concept is like a red herring.

"It's full of surprises the last time I saw it in the wind-tunnel, but they told me it is not the same."

[Henri]

Merc need to find 1.2 sec in order to be competitive. With ferrari and red bull

[Venturiation]

Merc need to find 1.2 sec in order to be competitive. With ferrari and red bull

they need more than that, last year they were 1 second slower and the other teams will find big gains this season

if the rumors about the ferrari 1 second faster is true then mercedes needs more than 2 seconds just to match it

[AR3-GP]

but this was during the season, in the abu dhabi race
during the winter i think they would have changed something even if not big

or maybe because of the budget cap they prefer to keep exactly the same sidepods to spend the budget elese since they think sidepods weren"t the issue

He actually said that very early January. https://www.planetf1.com/news/toto-wolf ... 14-design/

no he didn't that's just some news site recycling old stuff

you can see here https://racingnews365.com/wolff-reveals ... mid-season

He hinted at a car which retained the 'zero sidepod' idea to challenge next season's RB19 from Milton Keynes.

"I go in the wind tunnel, and I say: 'That thing looks exactly like this year's car'," he explained to media, including RacingNews365.com,in Abu Dhabi.

"But they say to me: 'It's very different underneath'.

"It is about the airflow, the weight distribution, the aero map.

"Our car fundamentally changed mid-year - we changed the concept but you couldn't see anything on the bodywork.

"I think the narrow sidepod concept is like a red herring.

"It's full of surprises the last time I saw it in the wind-tunnel, but they told me it is not the same."

From the bolded comments, its very clear the sidepods are the same.

[atanatizante]

1) all other things being equal, the lightest car will win
2) all other things being equal, the car with lowest CoG will win
3) all other things being equal, the car with the most centralised mass (lowest moment of inertia) will win

Wasn't lowest Cog as a big factor thrown put years ago?

Certainly dismissed by Adrian Newey with his high rake cars and his boat bottomed Valkyrie.

Another high CoG car were those renaults with the top mounted intercoolers.

I seem to note "all other things being equal" ahead of mass, CoG and centralised mass. All other things include downforce, drag, balance, power, driver, etc...

Also, I wouldn't take Renaults after 2006 as an indicator of performance.

I`m a little bit off-topic, but Vanja could you please explain if the "lip" in front of the RB18`s side pod air intake is near the CoG (or maybe CoP) and with its slope is adding downforce in those above-mentioned strategic points of the car?

Thanx in advance!

[organic]

Wasn't lowest Cog as a big factor thrown put years ago?

Certainly dismissed by Adrian Newey with his high rake cars and his boat bottomed Valkyrie.

Another high CoG car were those renaults with the top mounted intercoolers.

I seem to note "all other things being equal" ahead of mass, CoG and centralised mass. All other things include downforce, drag, balance, power, driver, etc...

Also, I wouldn't take Renaults after 2006 as an indicator of performance.

I`m a little bit off-topic, but Vanja could you please explain if the "lip" in front of the RB18`s side pod air intake is near the CoG (or maybe CoP) and with its slope is adding downforce in those above-mentioned strategic points of the car?

Thanx in advance!

The RB18 video by Kyle engineers covers the extended lower sidepod inlet lip in some detail. Skip to 17:00 or so:

[Chuckjr]

The good thing for Mercedes is they likely have more and bigger performance chunks to gain over Redbull. Redbull had a good design and now can only really incrementally refine it. Mercedes had big problems to solve which all things bring equal will free up more performance.

You don’t know if Merc have bigger performance chunks to gain. That’s an illusion in your head built by people here who think there’s some kida special magic in turd pods — most are die hard fans of the team, fwiw. For all we know RB will find much larger performance chunks than anybody. Incremental refinement is relative. Neweys incremental refinement may be 3 seconds or more by the end of season.

I never understood why people think the car behind on performance, has more margin for development. Just because a car is behind, doesn't automatically makes it a solution that has more potential to gain performance.

Those two sentences. Bueno. Exactly right. That’s also one of the HUGE illusions about the Merc...simply because it looks so different means it has so much more potential. Hogwash.

[PlatinumZealot]

btw i don't see them keeping the same sidepods there will be change maybe not totally different but smaller changes to improve the weaker area based on their data

The side pods gave the car the strongest low speed downforce... That's certainly an advantage you want to keep. The downside of the zero pods was a floppy floor which created huge amounts of drag becausw to fix it the set-up had to be compromised. That's why if Mercedes can engineer out the issues with the floor they could be contenders.